


Slim Chances and Mad Decisions

by alianora



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, imaginary science, peggy is a BAMF in all things, steve's blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 09:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: She had laid careful misdirection about flying home to England to see her ailing grandmother. And then she had turned and walked away from the job she loved and her small handful of friends and a woman who was neither her cousin nor in need of the kind of help the secretary might have thought.





	Slim Chances and Mad Decisions

Peggy stood straight-backed with her hands folded in front of her. Her hair was neatly rolled back from her face, and her hat was held firmly on with a pin. Her knuckles were white with tension, and she breathed in sharply when the plane above her finally angled in for landing.

It had taken her months to get this far.

When she had first heard, she thought it must be wrong. Peggy had been there when Doctor Erskine's office was cleared, and she had supervised the removal of his files using several strapping young soldiers and a few hearty nurses. She had packed up the files on Steve herself, safely tucking everything away into boxes to be sent on to government higher-ups. So it was not a high possibility that anything else could have been taken. Blood samples were difficult enough to get from Steve's enhanced veins that there was not much of chance that someone could have slipped in and stolen one.

It was a whisper of a rumor, with no substantial enough thread to the story for her to follow to determine where it had begun. She likely would have dismissed it herself had someone not come to her, claiming to the agency secretary that she was a cousin and needed Peggy's help. She had flushed and covered her belly, the secretary had made some incorrect conclusions, and she was sympathetically passed on to Peggy. How she had found Peggy, Peggy never knew. Perhaps she had seen some of the propaganda films where Peggy could be seen interacting with Steve. Or had seen the one where it was possible to see Peggy's picture inside Steve's watch. And the story the young woman told was both incredible and unbelievable.

Peggy had realized that following this to the point of origin was something no one else could be trusted to do. Turning the rumor and the unraveled truth over to the agency was not possible. There is no telling what they would have done with this, and besides, the nervous looking woman had come to her - not to the agency.

The idea of the possible fallout was abhorrent. Steve had been a grown man - old enough to give his consent for the procedure they performed.

This was something quite different. The actions a government could take - and would take, Peggy knew - using this would not be on people fully capable of consenting.

The plane slowed and stopped several meters away, propellers still rotating gently. Peggy bent to pick up the small case beside her. The plane was non-descript and small, and was not in the best condition, but it would do. The door swung open and Peggy walked forward, not letting any nerves show on her face. There was no going back after this. The agency and the United States government would see it as an act of betrayal.

She sat carefully, her case perched carefully on her knees. Peggy smoothed her hands over the lid once more before sitting back in her seat. She was the only passenger, and there were no staff other than the pilot. This was good. It would make it harder for anyone to track her.

She had toyed briefly with the idea of telling Mr. Jarvis some of it, has even opened her mouth to bring it up, but ultimately had dismissed the plan. She did not wish to put him in the position of lying to Howard. Howard had the uncanny knack of getting some odd fragments of information and putting together absurdly accurate puzzles with it. Instead, she had left her apartment and most of her things behind her. She had laid careful misdirection about flying home to England to see her ailing grandmother. And then she had turned and walked away from the job she loved and her small handful of friends and a woman who was neither her cousin nor in need of the kind of help the secretary might have thought.

She left it all behind for a tiny plot of land in the middle of Oregon, where she knew no one and most importantly, no one knew her.

The story the woman had told was almost far fetched enough to be unbelievable. But she had taken Peggy to a cold metallic doctor's office across the state, slipping them in through the back door after dark. She had shown Peggy what she knew, and then told her, in a frightened whisper, what was possible.

One little vial of blood had been stolen or mislabled and then misplaced. Even more unbelievably, the doctor did not know exactly what he had.

It was putting together two disparate pieces of information - one from the doctor's office where she had recently been a patient and had overhead some odd comments while searching for the restroom; and one from the research lab where she had been studying the possibilities of extracting DNA information from blood - that had sent the young woman searching for someone who would care. That had sent her searching for Peggy.

When Peggy had understood what she had seen and heard, she had plucked the unassuming vial from the freezer case where it sat with several other odd looking containers. This vial was half full of incongruously blue liquid. She thought, fleetingly and ridiculously, of the blue of Steve's eyes when she first saw it. She wrapped the vial in her handkerchief and tucked it carefully into the small inner pocket of her jacket. It was too important to leave behind.

The problem, she reflected, was that having even a small piece of Captain America was dangerous. Wars could be fought over this tiny vial. People would die. All for this slim chance of recreating a super soldier.

The solution was far more difficult.

The vial could be destroyed. She had rolled it over in her hands as she thought about it. The blue liquid clung to the sides as the vial turned in her fingers. It would be easy to empty out down the sink or onto the floor.

It is what she should have done that night.

Or the night after. Or the week after, or the month after.

But she hadn't. She couldn't bring herself to destroy the few precious drops of all that was left of Steve Rogers - Steve's DNA spun into a possibility.

And so she had made another decision. A mad, wild decision that had left her pacing her apartment from end to end, second guessing herself.

In the long run, the outcome was the same. The blood sample and the extracted DNA would be no more. The blood sample was destroyed extracting the DNA, and the DNA would also cease to be. No battles would be fought for it. No one would die.

Peggy had made her decision and carried it out - a decision she had never expected to make in any situation, and that led her to where she was now - on a plane carrying a case full of forged paperwork and a deed for a small farm house.

Far more precious than the case was the one other thing she brought with her. But she did not carry it in her bag, or even in her jacket pocket.

Margaret Carter, who had not showed any interest in playing with dolls, and certainly had never imagined herself a mother, was carrying Steven Roger's child.

 

END


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